Apple: Honeycrisp

[redbird]

I bought two locally grown honeycrisp apples at the farmers market on Monday, and just ate one.

I liked it: large, sweet, juicy, and yes crisp, with a good though not intense apple flavor. It's a good eating apple, though I suspect it wouldn't be great for baking. I'm a little skeptical about it as a cider apple; I've seen "100% Honeycrisp" labels on half gallons of apple cider, here as well as in Washington.

I'd had a Washington-grown Honeycrisp apple when we were living in Bellevue and been disappointed. That was when I was trying varieties I hadn't tasted here in the Northeast, some (like Pacific Rose) that I hadn't heard of until I moved to Washington, before I realized that Washington apples are all bland, because of either the soil, the climate, or both.

(This post is mostly for my own reference. It may also help you calibrate my apple reviews, since a lot of people have tried Honeycrisps.)

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Honeycrisps are definitely not cooking apples. Wolf says I cooked one once and so he reminds me not to EVERY TIME HE BUYS ANY. I say I did not cook any.

they're great out of hand though.

[notasupervillain]

I miss Honeycrisp so much since I left Canada.

[sine_nomine]

I like the Washington State grown Jazz apple... but, of course, it was developed there so perhaps properly adapted for soil, climate or both?

And yes, when I was in Maryland at the Famers Market frequented by Sweetheart I saw 100% Honeycrisp cider and it was SO PALE. I can't see the point. To me part of the fun of a honeycrisp is the eating. Though they are not my favorite apples overall.

[pameladean]

I have an apple crisp recipe that recommends half Honeycrisp and half Granny Smith, and it's really good. I wouldn't use all Honeycrisp, though.

P.

[redbird]

That's worth knowing.

We tend to use (approx) one Granny Smith, three or four of Macoun or Macintosh, or whatever we happen to have bought (Adrian is fond of Northern Spy for baking, and Brock in general), and a pear or two, plus some cranberries.

[pameladean]

That sounds really good, though fancier than I usually manage with an apple crisp. In apple season we ALWAYS have too many apples around, whereas pears and cranberries might not be right there in the house when somebody realizes that those apples really aren't getting any fresher.

I've used a mix of Gala and Granny Smith as well, and that is good but not quite sublime.

P.

[kate_schaefer]

I love Honeycrisps grown in Washington. Then again, we buy our Honeycrisps from just one farm, Tonnemaker, and we know that their farm is at a slightly higher elevation from other farms in the area, which makes a difference to the dates their produce is available and probably makes a difference to the flavor of their produce as well. I assume their trees get a bit colder in the winter and not quite as appallingly hot in the summer. Knowing that much about the source of any food is quite a privilege.

In my Ohio and east coast youth, the only apples I ever had were Red Delicious, the world's most boring and omnipresent apple. I don't know when the apple variety revival movement started; I didn't notice it until some time in the eighties or early nineties.

[mindstalk]

In the 80s I was raised on mostly Granny Smith, with occasional Macintosh or Northern Spy. Red Delicious is inedible. I tried one last year from a farmers market, touted as "grown here in New England! Actually good!" It was not.

[redbird]

The best things I have heard in favor of Red Delicious are that it's a little better when freshest—which it may be, but it's still not good—and that the modern variety called "Red Delicious" is inferior to what was originally sold under that name, decades ago. That latter may be true, but I can think of better things to do with a time machine, even if I was somehow limited to agricultural/horticultural uses and couldn't collect now-extinct species of bird or lost works of classical literature, or record Beethoven playing the piano. (That's the no-paradoxes-please science fiction version that doesn't allow for distributing smallpox and measles vaccines in North American before the European invasions, or changing the results of the 2016 election, only collecting seeds that didn't germinate, photographing a book, or the like.)

[necturus]

Re: Washington apples are all bland, because of either the soil, the climate, or both.

I've always found New England and New York apples to be more flavorful, but thought it was because they're more local to me.

Is it possible Pacific Northwest residents like their apples bland, and have selected them for their blandness?

[redbird]

Is it possible Pacific Northwest residents like their apples bland, and have selected them for their blandness?

I thought that for a long time; then I had Washington-grown Galas and Granny Smiths. Gala isn't a subtle apple, but the ones grown in Washington weren't as sweet as the ones from New Zealand (where they originated) or New York state. And I was buying and eating the Washington apples in Washington, so it's not a problem of travel. (I am reliably informed that California grows good strawberries, but don't ship them east, because the ripe, flavorful ones don't survive the trip.)

Japan imports a lot of Washington apples (which I know from some news stories, when I was living there, about the exports being temporarily excluded by Japan, I forget why, and possible effects on the local economy), and a fair number are sold elsewhere in the U.S. Maybe the purchasers are mostly feeding them to children, whose taste buds are somewhat different from adults and who may be cajoled to eat the apples "because it's good for you."